overThinking

One of the first things we learned in our Design thinking class was value. What is value and why it plays such an important role when it comes to creative businesses. In class we learned that besides the design thinking there is the so called analytical thinking. When creating a product/service there comes these two ways of thinking.

/

One of Norwegian artist’s Hedi Xandt best sculptures made with amazing mix of styles and materials. Source: http://trendland.com/

During our design thinking course we learned that the analytical way of solving a problem would be the standard one. The way it operates is that we know WHAT we want to do, we know HOW are we going to work it our and this leads to a RESULT. When thinking analytically sometimes the RESULT may be the missing item or the HOW. When you know what you want to do and you know the result you want to achieve, sometimes you may not know the way to do it. And here comes creativity.

Source: http://images.slideplayer.com/

In the process of design thinking the idea is slightly different. While analytical thinking concentrates on the RESULT at the end, the most important thing in design thinking is the aim to create VALUE. When thinking about our future product/service we had to focus on finding a problem, then finding the value for our early adopters and potential customers. I was about to say users, but then I remembered how our course leader warned us and actually forbid us to use the word ‘user’. And it makes sense since we do not want our customers to use us, we want us to consume the value we offer them!

There are and there will be millions and billions of businesses around the world. In order to be really competitive we learned what is most important- being creative when it comes to creating the needed value for our target groups.

The Value Proposition Canvas used to define in depth the value mission of the business. Source: strategyzer.com

Do you remember my post about the shoes and how we managed to ‘produce’ a shoe for 30 minutes (or at least an MVP of a shoe) out of paper and duct tape? This was how we practiced this lesson and where we applied what we learned. We had to know WHO are we producing the shoe for and that’s why our survey needed to be pretty detailed and strategic. When graduating bachelor degree I learned something really important- whatever you do in life it needs to be strategic. Life is like a game of chess or pool- you always need to think of the next move. And not only your move but your competitors move as well! Same applies to business. Whatever product or service we were about to do had to meet our target’s values and needs.

This lesson pretty much changed the way of thinking about creating businesses. It is not about the money, well at least not only about them. It is about making the world a better place, offering value to the people and changing the world globally.